


COLD

by spicyshimmy



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-08
Updated: 2012-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-29 05:52:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/316497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spicyshimmy/pseuds/spicyshimmy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Dragon Age: Asunder</i> fic, written for Naiadestricolor on tumblr, with spoilers for the book. Rhys suffers from a red nose and a charming spirit. <i>Mages—circle mages, anyway—tend to prefer something with a flaky crust to fill the belly better than idle daydreams and passing fancies. The latter barely settle before they’re empty again.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	COLD

Colds travel quickly in the Spire, as quickly as gossip, for the obvious reasons.

It’s because of all the mages living in close quarters, dormitories for apprentices on one floor and enchanters on another, common spaces crowded especially after meals—coughs hidden behind tomes in the library, mouths covered by the same hands that turn the pages.

It might also have _something_ to do with all the kissing after hours, glances stolen during the day that turn to something more by nightfall, or tarts split in secret enclaves by those who hunger for anything that seems, at the time, a little more real.

Mages—circle mages, anyway—tend to prefer something with a flaky crust to fill the belly better than idle daydreams and passing fancies. The latter barely settle before they’re empty again.

Elfroot soothes bleary eyes and raw noses but it doesn’t soothe the rest: the rumbling of the chest after each lingering cough, the pressure behind the cheekbones like a wine skein blown full of too much hot air, the roughened voice and all the little aches. It takes care of the fevers, at least, and with the fevers goes any chance for delirium, more dangerous than a sodden handkerchief tucked into a belt or a sleeve pocket—but perhaps not as unpleasant.

On a scale—if Rhys was forced to make a scale, which he often is—he’d mark demons as considerably less bothersome than a stuffy head, even if demons are _also_ less predictable.

He pinches the bridge of his nose where the pain begins, eyes bleary, shoulders tight. It’s a game he’s been playing, mostly with himself, the same game he’s enjoyed since he was just a boy. Its only rule involves blowing his nose into every protracted silence in the grand hall and seeing who jumps: apprentices passing one another notes; enchanters letting their minds drift; senior enchanters doing the same as any below them, the same as they’ve done since childhood.

And Adrian across the hall. _Sneezing_.

Rhys foregoes the handkerchief as she passes by his table, some appraisal reserved for his books before she shifts her focus to his face.

It’s still a good one, if a bit puffy today. He thinks he can see her thinking the same thing—though in different words, as usual.

‘Charming,’ she says, arms crossed and mouth tight. There’s a hint of mirth in her voice that won’t last past noon tomorrow, maybe even earlier, since she’s coming down with it too. Then she’ll forget humor ever existed, in the wake of murderous impulses.

Some people weather sickness _so_ much better than others.

‘Red noses suit me,’ Rhys tells her.

‘ _Everything_ suits you, doesn’t it?’ Adrian replies.

Rhys smiles through the tight skin drawn over his cheeks, the tickle that builds in the back of his throat. _Really_ , he thinks, _I’m just trying to show her how it’s done_ , but like all the best lessons, it goes underappreciated in its time.

*

They don’t imagine what it might be like to have a mother’s lap to rest their heads against, hot soup lifted with a gentle voice and even gentler fingers and no real features on the kind face, only kindness itself, so indistinct a concept. Rhys’s mother never seemed like the hot soup sort of woman—and his understanding of the ritual might be all wrong anyway.

That’s the trouble with assumption and fantasy, with what mages read and what they’ve never lived. Like arcane spells hidden in antiquity, the promise of power as opposed to its reality.

Though Rhys wouldn’t mind hot soup and a mother’s lap at the moment, even if the instinct conjures more than an image: fingers lacing through his hair, pressing at the temples with sharp nails.

He lights a glowlamp instead, two used handkerchiefs on the table beside it and three sheaves of vellum—all the ingredients for research or, depending on how you look at it, procrastination.

Rhys uses a third handkerchief to blow his nose again, his collection just begging for laundry day. He’ll drift off with his arms folded beneath his head and wake with a crick in his neck, paper creases lining his face from cheek to chin, his elfroot brew cold in the cup, or spilled by the twitch of his elbow during a quiet dream.

He’s drifting off when the sneeze wakes him, his own sneeze, loud enough to rattle the desk and spill the lukewarm tea.

No one soothes a hand through his hair, pushing the gray back from the temple over his ear, but shadows stir beyond the corner of his vision—shadows turning to light, something pale catching the glow of the lamp.

‘Cole?’ Rhys asks, the first name on his lips just after _Mother_.

Fingers first, then dark eyes, followed by the fall of an unruly forelock still poorly cut as ever. And surprise, always that, even though Rhys hides his yawn against his palm, stretching out the potential for a crick in his neck before it achieves momentum, before it _becomes_ anything.

‘Cole,’ Rhys repeats, settling his chin at his knuckles. He waits for the name to sink in like the soothing flush of elfroot in the tea—some of it in the back of his throat, most of it currently in his lap. ‘…Blast.’

He dries it while Cole watches, a spell that heats the fabric above the skin and lights the room, if only for a moment.

‘You look…’ Cole says.

‘Charming?’ Rhys suggests. ‘It was implied earlier.’

‘…Your nose is red,’ Cole finishes, after a time.

Rhys gestures to the handkerchiefs, the empty cup, then rubs the feature in question—not self-consciously, only because he knows it’s there.

Maybe that’s the same thing after all.

But Cole shakes his head, rubbing _his_ nose after, enough to say he doesn’t understand.

‘It’s a cold,’ Rhys says. ‘You’ve heard the others sneezing, haven’t you? Getting angry after, or laughing—but mostly groaning and feeling sorry for themselves. We’re used to quick cures here; it seems most of us would prefer dire injury to something this simple, if only because it makes more sense.’

Cole doesn’t sit and he doesn’t cast new shadow. He lingers in the corner of the room, somewhere by the door; Rhys always half-expects him to start pacing—even if he never does.

‘It happens often enough this time of year,’ Rhys explains. He finds a little leaf of elfroot caught in the stitching of his robes and he works it out through the thread, lifting it on his thumb, dark and dry and curling. ‘It’s even worse when it happens in the summer. Not colder—but worse.’

There’s an old Orlesian custom to make a wish on a coin or a feather, a lady’s favor or a lost bead from a mask. Rhys feels fifteen again when he blows the leaf loose into free-fall on the air.

‘Don’t tell me you’ve never had a cold before,’ he says, wiping his hand against his thigh.

 _Cold_. It sounds like the name, just close enough—but also just wrong enough that it doesn’t matter.

Cole shakes his head and rubs his nose a second time, the way a shadow echoes an action without question, the subtleties of the image drawn backwards in a mirror.

‘…You’ve never had a cold before.’ Rhys sighs. ‘Cole, do you have _any_ idea how lucky that is?’

*

Colds travel quickly in winter, even more quickly in spring, the last of the frost still heavy in the dawn and still brittle on the grass. Rhys drifts off with his arms folded beneath his head and wakes with a blanket tucked up around his shoulders, the faded touch of someone’s knuckles curled against the gray at his temples, sweeping it back over his ear. When he turns, there’s no one there—just a quiet room in Andoral’s Reach, empty beyond the sound of Rhys’s first breath, which is naturally as stuffy as the dead fire in the hearth.

There’s a single word written on the empty vellum in front of him, the quill slid free of his grip sometime in the night, with dry ink staining the tip.

 _Cold_ , it says, so close to a name but also too far, an action that doesn’t need to be signed.

Rhys presses his thumb to his temple, and feels his heart still beating there. 

 **END**


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